Tobacco.org

Distributors' suit accuses big tobacco of collusion on price hikes 

"Despite the introduction of the discount cigarette brands during the period from 1980 to 1992, average cigarette prices in the U.S. rose faster than costs," the suit said.

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Suit Accuses Tobacco Firms of Price-Fixing Conspiracy 

 Although cigarette consumption has been falling, tobacco companies throughout the years have managed to boost prices well above the rate of inflation. Whereas the suit attributes this to price-fixing, some analysts have attributed it to the addictiveness of tobacco products.

     Lawyers involved in the case said additional class actions on behalf of smokers who may have overpaid could be filed in a matter of days.

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• Lawsuit alleges cigarette makers have fixed prices since the 1980s 

[This is today's WSJ article] A lawsuit expected to be filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington will assert the major U.S. cigarette manufacturers met secretly to make illegal agreements on wholesale prices, according to a draft copy of the suit. . . The suit initially will be brought on behalf of two cigarette wholesalers in Buffalo, N.Y., and Bryan, Texas. But the suit seeks class-action status, meaning the lawyers are asking to represent all distributors hurt by the alleged price-fixing, said Michael Hausfeld, a high-profile class-action specialist whose Washington firm, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, is leading a group of more than 20 firms in the case.

The suit is expected to allege, among other things, the major tobacco companies fixed prices at meetings of the so-called Committee of Counsel, a group of company lawyers who met periodically to discuss a variety of industry issues.

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